Just Another Boring Trinity Story

You wanted sailboats on the Trinity River? You got sailboats on the Trinity River.

It's the tale of two cities: In this Dallas Morning News story, today's closed-door meeting between staffs of the City of Dallas and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is all about irritating bureaucratic delays in the Trinity River toll road project. In this WFAA-Channel 8 story, we learn that the meeting really is about dealing with problems that could cause a Katrina-like disaster in downtown Dallas.

Little bitta diff'rence.

Rudy Bush at The News tells us that the Corps for the third time has turned down requests to bore a bunch of holes in the levees -- those big dirt mounds along the river that keep downtown from flooding. Bush says that's bad because "the setback stands to further delay the project if it isn't resolved in a hastily scheduled meeting today of engineers from the Corps, the North Texas Tollway Authority and the city of Dallas."

Well, yeah, that. Over at WFAA, reporter Brad Watson hits that point high up in his story too, but Watson also mentions that "Gene Rice, with the Corps, said the latest NTTA plan put the levee at risk." Uh, put the levee at risk? Is that important?
Well, the equivalent story, if Dallas were on the slopes of Mount
Washington, would be, "Drilling Risks Eruption." If this were Amarillo
in the 1970s, the equivalent story would be, "Drilling at A-Bomb Plant
Risks Explosion."

Yeah. Important.

The News version does get around to mentioning the
danger-to-the-levees factor, but only at the bottom -- and then only by
quoting city council member Angela Hunt, described as, "Angela Hunt,
who has long opposed construction of the toll road inside the
floodway."
If this were New Orleans in early August 2005, just before Katrina
hit, that would be, "Angela Hunt, this big worry-wart who thinks
there's actually going to be like a flood or something in New Orleans,
oh, sure."